


Pretty Girls

by CallYourGirlfriend



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alcoholism, Backstory, Canon Compliant, Canon Het Relationship, Character Study, Drabble, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Georgia, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-21 08:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11353854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallYourGirlfriend/pseuds/CallYourGirlfriend
Summary: Leonard McCoy can remember the first patient who ever drove him to drink. Her name was Megan and she was a six-year-old girl with chocolate curls and the brightest green eyes McCoy had seen on a human. She was the daughter of one of Jocelyn’s tennis partners; born into Georgia high society just like Jocelyn and unlike McCoy.





	Pretty Girls

**Author's Note:**

> Leonard McCoy didn't start drinking because he liked the taste.

Leonard McCoy can remember the first patient who ever drove him to drink. Her name was Megan and she was a six-year-old girl with chocolate curls and the brightest green eyes McCoy had seen on a human. She’d been the daughter of one of Jocelyn’s tennis partners; born into Georgia high society just like Jocelyn and unlike McCoy. 

So when McCoy found himself sitting with the little girl while Jocelyn drank white wine and gloated to her brunch friends that yes, she was engaged to a _doctor_ , he thought he had the better conversation. They’d been talking about why eggs were yellow when nutrient cubes that tasted like eggs were blue. It was the kind of conversation McCoy’s three degrees could appreciate.

“I don’t know little one,” McCoy was saying. “‘Suppose it’s more appetizing to eat a blue thing than a yellow thing. Yellow things kind of look like pus.”

Megan nodded seriously, “Or like number one.” 

McCoy sniggered. Wondering what Megan’s prissy mother would say to her daughter making pee comments at the fanciest brunch this side of Savannah. “Or like number one,” McCoy conceded. “But I can’t see your mama giving you anything but the chocolate flavored nutrient cubes.”

“Anna Maria’s not my mama,” Megan said, spearing a sausage link with her fork. “She’s daddy’s new wife.”

McCoy didn’t want to touch that, but neither did he want to listen to Jocelyn talk around the fact his daddy was a peach farmer not an oilman, so he plowed ahead. “You like Anna Maria though, right? She’s pretty and she takes you horseback riding and to tennis lessons with Ms. Jocelyn.”

Megan chewed her sausage, dragging her fork through the grease on her plate. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “But sometimes we can’t go.”

“Why’s that?” McCoy asked gently. Something about this conversation made his stomach uneasy, like he ate too fast. He reached for the champagne, hoping the bubbles would alleviate the sudden nausea. “Megan, why can’t Anna Maria take you out?”

“‘Cause Daddy sometimes make me not so pretty,” Megan stated plainly, like she would if McCoy had asked her why Tarsus has three moons. “‘Cept for this one time. He and Anna Maria yelled, and he made her not so pretty too. We didn’t go to tennis for three sleeps that time.”

McCoy has a psyche degree, but he hardly needed it to understand what Megan was telling him over eggs benedict and maple sausage in one of the best homes in town. “Megan, I -- ”

“Megan, darling, come stand with Daddy.”

Martin Winters stood with his new wife across the room, telling stories and collecting laughs. Jocelyn was in hysterics at something he’d said, her hand falling carelessly on his arm. His charm was disgusting, as charismatic as Andorian shingles. Yet Megan ran to him, joining the melee with a smile that doesn’t know any better. That assumed everyone has days when they’re not so pretty. 

McCoy felt violently ill at the thought, and took it upon himself to finish the champagne and then start on the pitcher of Bloody Marys. It’s not until he’s seeing double that he found Jocelyn and slurred at her what he knows, what he hasn’t seen, but what he knows. 

“Heavens, Leo, you’re disgusting,” Jocelyn said, covering her nose against his vodka breath as they waited for transport to take them home. “God forbid you refrain from embarrassing me in front of my friends just the once--”

“Jocelyn, love, he’s hurtin’ that little girl and her mama,” McCoy pleaded with his fiancee. 

Jocelyn shoved his pliant body into the transport. “That man is going to be mayor of Savannah in six weeks. You don’t go bad mouthin’ your mayor. They may do that in the backwoods of Macomb County, but don’t you forget you’re in Savannah now Leo.”

Now McCoy loved Jocelyn just enough to forgive her harsh words. After all, it was her daddy who was paying for him to open practice closer to the family home. Closer to the kinds of money McCoy had never even heard of in Macomb. 

So he let it go, and one year later he had a daughter. A beautiful little girl with chocolate curls and his hazel eyes who laughed all the time. They named her Joanna after Jocelyn’s mother, but they let McCoy pick her middle name. 

“Megan,” he said to the hospital room full of Jocelyn’s friends and family. “Joanna Megan McCoy.”

“Oh I see what you’re doing, lovely alliteration there,” Jocelyn’s mother flapped. 

“Yeah,” McCoy agreed. It’s not like these women remembered the little girl who died six months ago when she “fell” off a horse. Such a tragedy for the mayor to lose his only daughter, was what they’d said. But they never spoke her name because they don’t remember Megan Winters. 

But McCoy remembered her. Everytime he takes a drink, he remembers her. He’s the only one.


End file.
